Explores the way writers address the formation and fate of the contemporary American working class in an age of neoliberal globalization. Specifically, the essay examines Russell Banks's 1985 novel Continental Drift, which interweaves the stories of two characters who pull up stakes and head to Florida in search of a better life: an oil furnace repair man from New Hampshire and a young, single mother from Haiti.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
310 p., Relates current theoretical debates about hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the actual conditions of refugees. Examines literary works by such writers as Edwidge Danticat, Nikl Payen, Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Julia Alvarez, Ivonne Lamazares, and Cecilia Rodriguez Milans, Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris.